Air Or Water?

Water-cooled PCs have gone in and out of vogue over the past few years, and thanks to the recent boom in high-end gaming PCs, it seems that water-cooling is the cool thing to do again. With this in mind, ASUS has recently unveiled its latest 980 Ti variant in the form of the ASUS GTX 980 Ti Poseidon Platinum.

Out of the box, the Poseidon is clocked at 1,114MHz, which is a bit more than what the reference card has on offer. On top of that, the Poseidon’s boost clock also goes up to about 1,203, which can go up even further depending on how you overclock the card.

The Poseidon is a beautiful card to look at, as ASUS maintains the standard ROG black-and-red colour combination, and coupled with its Auto Extreme PCB and aluminium back plate, the card feels rugged and premium at the same time.

Now the main feature of the Poseidon Platinum is that users are given the option to use either air-cooling, or watercooling on this GPU. The air-cooling portion includes ASUS’ own patented dust-proof fans, which the company claims adds up to about 25 percent to the Poseidon’s lifespan by cooling the card a whole 5.0 degrees Celcius cooler than other similar cards.

If water-cooling is your weapon of choice, ASUS claims that the GPU can be cooled a whole 27 degrees Celcius, thanks to a combination of ASUS’ DirectCUII H20 water channel and vapour chamber cooling systems.

As if that’s not all, you can also choose to use which G1/4 inch threaded fittings suits your system best. You can choose between ID 1/2”, ID 3/8” and ID 1/4” threads, depending on what your needs are.

How about performance, you ask? As we don’t have a custom water-cooling loop on hand, we tested the Poseidon’s air-cooling capabilities, and were not left disappointed. During our tests, out of the box, the only times the GPU breached the 70 degrees Celcius mark is when the GPU is running some heavy duty benchmarking, and playing games. Even then, the fans silently cooled the GPU, with the only indication of the GPU doing any work coming from the ROG LEDs that indicate the level of GPU usage.

CHIP CONCLUDE: If you’re looking to build a PC that’s powerful and fully water-cooled, the ASUS GTX 980 Ti Poseidon Platinum is definitely one to consider.